The path of Torah is hard to figure out. I have a basic approach that is this learn and do the whole Written Torah and the whole Oral tradition. Now the Oral tradition is admitted not the same level as prophecy. But it is a vigorous and rigorous attempt at understanding the Torah. The oral tradition it something that is a kind of grey area. But at least we know what was actually given in tradition.
There is no doubt about what the Talmud is or how it came to be written. It was written by flawed men but contains the basic tradition of how the Jewish people understood the word of God, It is not some mysterious book that some person claimed was revealed to him.
So while it can be hard to figure out how to apply the Talmud to our daily lives still we know what it is and basically what it says.
The Zohar is not that. But that does not mean I think there is no validity in Isaac Luria. It is just that the Zohar I see as problematic.
Musar I think got way too much influenced by Kabalah. I would suggest a modification of the Musar movement based on the school of thought of the son of the Rambam and the whole geonic school. before kabalah confused everything.
All books of Jewish Ethics after the the Zohar accept the paradigm of the Zohar. This I am not happy about. Kabalah is a mixed bag. On one hand you have Isaac Luria, Shalom Sharabi, and Yaakov Abuchatzeira , who were amazing and great people that served God and received true revelations.
On the hand (--and what makes it all confusing) is that the Zohar is not what it claims to be. It is not from Shimon Bar Yochai as Rav Yaakov Emden made all too clear in his book showing that the Zohar cant be from the Rashbi.
On one hand you can have mystics. That is a kind of personal revelation type of thing. On the other hand you have text based mysticism--based on Zohar. And in the later I see very little good. I think it is what caused the insane religious world to fall into the Sitra Achra.
There is no doubt about what the Talmud is or how it came to be written. It was written by flawed men but contains the basic tradition of how the Jewish people understood the word of God, It is not some mysterious book that some person claimed was revealed to him.
So while it can be hard to figure out how to apply the Talmud to our daily lives still we know what it is and basically what it says.
The Zohar is not that. But that does not mean I think there is no validity in Isaac Luria. It is just that the Zohar I see as problematic.
Musar I think got way too much influenced by Kabalah. I would suggest a modification of the Musar movement based on the school of thought of the son of the Rambam and the whole geonic school. before kabalah confused everything.
All books of Jewish Ethics after the the Zohar accept the paradigm of the Zohar. This I am not happy about. Kabalah is a mixed bag. On one hand you have Isaac Luria, Shalom Sharabi, and Yaakov Abuchatzeira , who were amazing and great people that served God and received true revelations.
On the hand (--and what makes it all confusing) is that the Zohar is not what it claims to be. It is not from Shimon Bar Yochai as Rav Yaakov Emden made all too clear in his book showing that the Zohar cant be from the Rashbi.
On one hand you can have mystics. That is a kind of personal revelation type of thing. On the other hand you have text based mysticism--based on Zohar. And in the later I see very little good. I think it is what caused the insane religious world to fall into the Sitra Achra.
